


Chick Habit

by Ignaz Wisdom (ignaz)



Category: due South
Genre: F/F, Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-11
Updated: 2006-10-11
Packaged: 2017-10-01 23:45:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignaz/pseuds/Ignaz%20Wisdom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Francesca Vecchio learns to want, learns that she can't have what she wants, and finally learns that she can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chick Habit

**Author's Note:**

> So when I said I was interested in Frannie and femslash? I meant with a vengeance. Also, I might have plagiarized myself a bit by cribbing some things from my short story "Mountie: A Love Story in Three Parts," just because I'm crazy in love with the idea of Frannie/Maggie, and the way it happened in that story is the best way I can think of to make it happen. I hope this still sounds fresh. Super huge thanks to Chris for beta reading. This was written for lordessrenegade's [Get Frannie Laid](http://frannievecchio.livejournal.com/) challenge, and I'd like to thank her for running said challenge and to apologize for the delay on this story.

She was sixteen the first time, and looking back, she wasn't half as sultry as she'd thought she was. She'd felt really elegant then, really grown-up, but years later, with a little more perspective, she realized that she'd just been all awkward limbs and baby fat.

Lucia was two years older and not awkward at all. She was tall and model skinny, and she wore black motorcycle boots that looked like they could shatter convenience store windows. Lucia had been a smoker since middle school and there were rumors that she'd even been in a knife fight with a girl from another school. Lucia was dangerous. Lucia was eighteen but acted twenty-eight -- like the adult Frannie liked to fantasize she was.

But Lucia also liked Frannie, for some unexplainable reason. She didn't mind when Frannie stared and stared at her worn leather jacket; she offered Frannie a cigarette after school and didn't even laugh when it sent her into a breathless, choking cough fit. So after school one day, Frannie walked home with her, back to the tiny apartment Lucia shared with her mother -- at least when her mother was around, which, Lucia said, wasn't very often. There in the quiet, Frannie drank beer while Lucia smoked a joint, which made them both loose and soft around the edges, and then Frannie learned that Lucia didn't just like her -- she _really_ liked her.

The first kiss tasted like marijuana smoke. The second tasted the same, but with a hint of bubble gum. The third didn't taste like anything at all, riding in as it did on a wave of lust, powerful and unfamiliar and raw. Almost before she even realized it, Lucia's long fingers were under her blouse, rolling over her nipples, and then sliding beneath the hem of her skirt, seeking that place where everything was wet and warm.

Then Lucia's long fingers were holding onto Frannie's wrists, guiding her hands beneath Frannie's own skirt, under her cotton panties, coaxing her to learn her own heated depths.

"Here," Lucia whispered into Frannie's ear, "like that. So you never have to depend on someone else to make you come."

Afterwards, her clothes wrinkled and her knees still shaking, Frannie walked back to her own big house full of noisy relatives. She could barely keep up with the chaotic conversation over dinner, distracted as she was by the vivid, physical memory of the tremors she'd felt under their joined hands.

That night in bed, she felt the tiny gold cross around her neck, pressing it between her index finger and thumb until she could feel the faint imprint in the soft pads of her fingers. Her stomach began to ache. Then she pressed her hands together and started to pray.

* * *

When Ray finally got finished shouting about how he was going to kill Frannie's no-good scumbag husband, how he was going to wring his neck and break all his fingers and dump him in a shallow grave, Maria quietly slid a cream-colored business card over to Frannie across the table top.

"My girlfriend Lisa went to this woman when her husband started getting a little rough," Maria said. "She's really good with that kind of thing. Got Lisa a divorce and a restraining order like that," and she snapped her fingers to illustrate.

Frannie held the thick, expensive-looking card in her hand and figured -- what the hell. What did she have to lose?

The next week she was sitting in a soft leather chair, the same vanilla color as the business card, in a quiet waiting room. She was so nervous that she had her purse in her hand and was ready to leave twice before a pretty blonde woman finally stuck her head out from behind a glass door and called her name.

Even in the office, she felt the ongoing urge to bolt. Stella Kowalski was only a few years older than her, but she had a cushy job -- no, a _career_ \-- and a pricey-looking office and, if the ring on her left hand was any sign, a marriage that was actually working. There were no pictures of children that Frannie could see, or actually any pictures at all, but maybe that sort of thing was considered unprofessional. Next to Stella, Frannie felt like small potatoes. She didn't know if she was resentful or envious, but it made her skin itch.

But she could tell that Stella was trying to put her at ease. She offered Frannie water, sparkling or otherwise, or juice if she wanted it. What Frannie really needed was a lot stronger than that, but she didn't say so.

Instead, she tried to explain her own marriage, her own worthless, suffocating marriage, to Stella, who seemed so nice and understanding. She talked about the way he was when they met, and in the first few months after the wedding, and the way he was when he stayed out late just like her old man, and how he came home drunk and smacked her around. Her throat tightened and she could feel her face turning hot with shame and defeat.

"I can't do this," she whispered, "I can't --" and suddenly, without another word, Stella was there, and Frannie was falling against her, letting herself be held and held upright, comforted, wrapped in the other woman's arms.

She was dimly aware that Stella was murmuring soothing nonsense into her hair. Stella's soft, warm breath ghosted over her skin and she shivered in recognition, heat already gathering between her legs. She could smell Stella's perfume, something exotic and probably expensive. It made her feel light-headed. So when Stella turned her face to Frannie's and their lips brushed, it was the most natural thing in the world to just push forward, seeking the other woman's mouth with her own.

But Stella froze, then jerked a little, pulling her face away but not putting any more distance between them. "I --" She stopped and nervously licked her lower lip. "I can't," she said. But before the words were out, something had changed in her face. Frannie watched as Stella looked away, around the room with its expensive carpet and no family pictures, and remembered her own slim wedding ring, still shining in the jewelry box on her dresser at home.

"No," Stella said quietly, pulling Frannie forward again, and then against her lips she whispered: "I can."

There was no bed, and not even a decent couch like at Lucia's little apartment, so she pulled Stella with her as she leaned on the rich mahogany desk, knocking a pen and a paperweight askew. Stella's breasts felt heavy and soft through her shirt, which was as close as Frannie was going to get to them without working through a daunting line of buttons. She felt her own breasts shaped through her blouse, felt thumbs rub over her erect nipples, and hiked up her skirt. She bit Stella's red-smeared lip and stared at the glint off the gold band on Stella's left ring finger when she came.

She had to find a different lawyer after that.

And a different priest.

* * *

When Ray went undercover with the mob, and they found out that they wouldn't even get to talk to him for God knows how many years, taking a job at the station was the only thing she could do. That she got to see Fraser almost every day was a real nice perk, even if he still treated her like she was ten years old or something -- even if she knew that it would never work out between them.

"So the staples are ... here?" Frannie plucked a box from a high shelf in the supply closet and was disappointed to see a picture of thumbtacks on it.

Elaine grabbed the box next to it and handed it to her. "Here," she said, and even though it was about the tenth thing Frannie had screwed up so far that day, Elaine didn't even sound mad about it.

"Oh," Frannie answered, a little sheepish. "Thanks."

"It's all right," Elaine assured her, not for the first time. "You just need to learn your way around. You'll get the hang of it."

"You think so?" Frannie smiled, and then stopped smiling, and tried really hard not to think about how nice Elaine looked in her new uniform. She couldn't help it. She reached across the narrow space separating them in the dimly lit closet and fingered one of the shiny buttons on the uniform's front.

Elaine was quiet for a moment, but then Frannie looked up and caught her licking her lower lip. "Yeah," Elaine answered, sort of breathlessly. "You're doing fine so far," and she reached out with her own hand to awkwardly pat Frannie on the shoulder.

"Really," Frannie replied, and it was more of a statement than a question. She might have rephrased it as a question if she and Elaine hadn't both taken that exact moment to lean forward into each other's space and start some serious necking.

There wasn't room to do much in the closet, but neither of them seemed to care. Elaine pushed Frannie up against a mountainous stack of printer paper and sucked on her tongue. Frannie fumbled with the shiny buttons on Elaine's uniform, knocking a box of paperclips to the floor in the process. They were urgent, almost frantic. Elaine slipped her fingers under Frannie's skirt, around the thin layer of silk, and slid two of them inside so quickly that it almost -- but didn't -- hurt. Frannie pulled her knee up and let Elaine grind against her thigh, scraping her nails over Elaine's taut nipple for added emphasis. Frannie came first, gasping into Elaine's open mouth, and then she brought Elaine off more slowly, thumbing her clit and pressing her against the supply closet door so nobody could walk in.

Disheveled, her body still ringing with aftershocks, Frannie tried in vain to fix her hair and make herself presentable. Elaine was refastening the shiny buttons of her uniform, their color glinting in the dim light.

"Actually," Frannie said casually, "I was thinking of going into the academy in a few years."

Elaine looked up from her buttons, her face carefully blank. "Really?"

"Sure," Frannie said. "What, you don't think I could do it?"

"No, no," Elaine protested. "I'm sure you'd be great." She brushed invisible dust from the front her uniform pants and straightened up, glancing at her watch. "It's three," she said, trying for nonchalance and mostly failing, "I should really get going."

"Um," Frannie said, not even in the ballpark of nonchalant, "Elaine. Would you maybe like to … I don't know … have dinner tonight?"

Elaine looked at her, averted her eyes, and then looked back again. "I can't," she finally said, quietly. "I'm sorry -- I can't."

So Frannie let Elaine leave, and bent to straighten up the fallen paperclips.

* * *

She'd never really had much interest in Canada before Benton Fraser walked into her life. She'd definitely never given Mounties a passing thought. But one look at Fraser was enough to have anyone thinking about Mounties -- seriously, seriously thinking about Mounties. And really, there were an awful lot of Mounties in her life, probably way more than in most people's lives in Chicago. So it wasn't surprising that she should spend a lot of time thinking about them. It practically rained Mounties whenever she went to work.

Fraser's boss might not wear the uniform very much, but she was still a Mountie. Frannie's brother hadn't liked her very much, and neither did her new fake brother. Frannie didn't like her all that much, either, but for a different reason: Frannie didn't like Meg Thatcher because she got to work with Fraser. And Fraser lived where he worked, so really, every day that Meg Thatcher went to the Canadian Consulate was like going over to Fraser's house, right up into his bedroom. It was easy to be jealous.

But in a way, she also admired Inspector Thatcher, for the same reason she admired Elaine Besbriss. It took guts to be a woman and a cop. She'd had a cop for a brother long enough to know that it wasn't a job that welcomed women with open arms. But Meg Thatcher was a cop, and she must have been a damn good one too, to be Fraser's boss.

Frannie was a little jealous of that, too.

At the precinct Christmas party, she finally got up the nerve to ask Thatcher about it -- about what it was like, working in that kind of atmosphere. She had to have a couple of glasses of wine first, because Thatcher was kind of a tough nut to crack, and the whole thing made Frannie a little nervous.

But Meg had had a few drinks, too, which made her seem dramatically, unexpectedly human: relaxed, smiling, getting a little misty when she talked about the loneliness and isolation of being a woman in the RCMP.

They shared a cab back to Meg's apartment, where Frannie carefully, drunkenly, stripped Meg of her clothes. They went to bed -- and boy if that wasn't a revolution in Frannie's sex life. The last time she'd gotten laid in a bed was when she was married, and that hardly counted.

Getting horizontal brought a whole new dimension to things. Frannie could relax completely without having to worry about falling off of couches or sliding down walls of printer paper. She could move her legs, lift them, spread them apart to let Meg bury her face between them. She could shudder and shake and writhe to her heart's content while Meg's tongue circled her clit and plunged inside her. Later, she could roll Meg onto her back, shimmy down the length of her body, and return the favor. And still later they could lie together, legs tangled, and sleep.

But in the sober light of the next morning, it was like nothing had happened. She awoke to find Meg dressed, suit jacket and all, shoving a cup of hot tea into Frannie's hand before disappearing into the bathroom. She said that she had an urgent appointment to make, and that she really had to be going, and did Frannie have enough money for a cab? Frannie quietly sipped her tea while she pulled her clothes on.

"I trust," said Meg, urgently, before sending Frannie out the door, "that this ... incident ... will remain between us?"

"Sure," Frannie said, and handed her the empty tea cup.

* * *

The first time Frannie Vecchio met Maggie Mackenzie, what she felt was jealousy. The three of them strolled into the station, walking right up alongside each other like they were attached: Kowalski, Fraser, and the pretty blonde Mountie in her little red coat. Frannie wasn't really sure who she was jealous of, but there was something there that made her chest ache: the way Maggie and Fraser looked in their identical uniforms, and the way they talked, like they were speaking their own secret Canadian language that nobody else could understand. Even the way Ray clung to Maggie like he was some kind of puppy made Frannie roll her eyes defensively.

The second time Frannie Vecchio met Maggie Mackenzie, what she felt was relief. As it turned out, Maggie and Fraser were so similar in their bizarreness for a reason, and it wasn't just because they were Canadian -- although that was probably a big part of it. Even Kowalski seemed to have cooled his jets, like he'd just found out that Maggie was _his_ sister instead of Fraser's.

And there was something wrong about that. Frannie would be the first to admit that she didn't always understand men -- the still-raw pain of her divorce was proof of that -- but she was pretty sure that there was no rule of restraint about staying away from your friends' sisters, especially for a guy as earnest as Ray Kowalski. His ex-wife -- who kept a safe, professional distance from Frannie whenever she was paying a visit to the 2-7 -- still practically had to beat him off with a stick. And even her own brother, who was as possessive as they came, had grudgingly admitted that it wouldn't be such a bad idea for Fraser to ask Frannie out -- not that Fraser ever would, mind you, but ... just in theory. If anyone was going to ask Frannie out, Ray had figured, it ought to be a friend, someone that he could trust around his little sister. So it wasn't like Fraser would have told Kowalski to get lost and keep his mitts off of Maggie Mackenzie, and if he had, it wasn't like Kowalski would have just _listened._

So Frannie wondered if it had anything to do with the way Maggie had lied about her status with the RCMP, and hadn't told them that the murdered guy was her husband. Or that her husband had been in cahoots with a bunch of bank robbers. But according to Fraser, Maggie didn't even know that her husband had anything to do with that. Her husband had lied to her, and who could blame a girl for marrying a guy who turned out to be something other than what he said he was? Frannie herself knew a little bit about that. Actually, she thought, she and Maggie probably had more in common than first met the eye.

Of course, everything made a little more sense when Kowalski moved to Canada with Fraser. She went up there to visit them with her brother ... and that was the third time she met Maggie Mackenzie.

While Fraser and the Rays caught up and bitched at each other, Maggie took Frannie to a restaurant in town -- if Inuvik could be called a town -- and over a stew made of moose or bear or God only knew what, they talked.

On account of the fact that she'd caught her husband's killers, just as she'd said she would, Maggie had been given back her position in the RCMP. The unusual behavior leading up to her suspension, Maggie explained, had been partly excused by the news of her relationship to Robert and Benton Fraser -- risking your job to chase criminals over thousands of miles seemed to be genetic.

Maggie gave her advice on getting through the rough parts of the police academy, although Frannie kind of doubted that there would be any training involving caribou herds. She gave Maggie advice on having a brother, although most of it probably wasn't relevant, seeing as she and Benton had pretty much passed the years of screaming fights and pulling at each other's hair. They talked about what it was like to learn that the man you thought you loved wasn't who he'd said he was.

They smiled, they laughed, they cried, and Frannie began to realize what she'd sort of guessed all along: that Maggie Mackenzie was the same as Benton Fraser, and not just because they shared a father. Maggie was every bit as good and kind and loyal as her Fraser. And what's more, Maggie was reaching across the table separating them, taking Frannie's hand, and not looking at Frannie like she was a child, or a sister, or something to be afraid of. She was at the top of the world, and anything could happen.

The last time Frannie Vecchio met Maggie Mackenzie, what she felt was hope.


End file.
